An NGO has called for an independent probe by Delhi High Court into the circumstances leading to a Delhi police officer announcing AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair’s 14-day judicial remand even before the trial court had pronounced the order.

On July 2, several hours before the chief metropolitan magistrate had passed her order in a case related to charges that Zubair had hurt religious sentiments and promoted enmity through a 2018 tweet, a senior police officer had messaged reporters on WhatsApp: “Bail rejected, 14 day JC granted.”

The NGO Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms on Tuesday issued a statement saying it “is deeply concerned about the manner in which the Delhi police has filed questionable charges against Mr Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of AltNews, and arrested him, based on a 2018 tweet that merely involved remarks on a screenshot from an old Hindi film.

“The CJAR is further shocked at the manner in which the Delhi police revealed the contents of the order in the ongoing case of Mohammed Zubair’s bail, to the media, more than five hours prior to the order being pronounced on the 2nd of July.”

Besides lawyers like Shanti Bhushan, Prashant Bhushan and Kamini Jaiswal, the CJAR has among its patrons civil liberties activists Arundhati Roy, Cheryl D’Souza, Nikhil Dey, Alok Prasanna Kumar, Venkatesh Sundaram, Indu Prakash Singh, Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri.

The CJAR pointed out that around 2pm on July 2, several media organisations began reporting that Zubair had been denied bail and he had been sent to 14 days’ judicial custody. The NGO said that in reality, as of 2pm the judge had reserved the order and was yet to return to preside over the bench.

“It is most shocking that several hours later when the bench actually assembled and the order was pronounced, it was exactly what the police had announced earlier — denial of bail and 14 days’ judicial custody,” the NGO said.

“The explanation offered by the deputy superintendent of police that ‘I had a word with my IO, I misheard it due to noise and inadvertently the message was posted in the broadcast’ is bizarre to put it mildly. No effort was made to correct the record when media outlets flashed this information and it was only when the counsels for the petitioner raised the issue did the clarification even come about,” the CJAR said.

“We believe strict action must be taken against officials responsible for this. To reinforce the faith of the public in the judiciary and constitutional governance… a thorough independent probe… must be conducted forthwith by the Delhi High Court,” the statement said.

K.P.S. Malhotra, deputy commissioner of police (intelligence fusion and strategic operations), had on July 2 admitted to incorrectly informing the media that Zubair’s plea had been rejected and the journalist had been sent to 14-day judicial custody.

The CJAR said, referring to another case slapped on Zubair on Monday: “We are further concerned that Mr Zubair has now been remanded to 14 days judicial custody based on an FIR filed on 1st June by the Sitapur district police in Uttar Pradesh for reportedly calling three Hindutva leaders as ‘hate mongers’. We feel that in both instances the Delhi and UP police have been inappropriately invoking the law to persecute a fact-checker. We demand that the constitutional right to liberty of Mr Zubair be upheld and the ill-conceived charges against him be dropped immediately by the Delhi and UP police.”